The practice of “office hoteling” is becoming increasingly common. Office hoteling refers to the technique of managing office space by providing office space to workers on an as-needed basis rather than on the traditional, constantly reserved basis. This reduces the amount of physical space that a company needs to maintain while ensuring that every worker can have access to office space when necessary. Office hoteling may be extremely useful to companies that have large numbers of workers who no not require permanently assigned office space, such as consultants or salespeople. For example, when a salesperson requires an office for a couple of days at a specific company facility, the salesperson can just reserve an office for the required days.
To allow workers who work out of these temporarily assigned offices to retain their communication identities, these companies are increasing deploying Internet-based communications solutions. Internet-based communications solutions are focused on the concept of “people-centric” communications. People-centric communications revolve around the concept of contacting a person (e.g., Joe Smith) instead of the person's communication device (e.g., the telephone number of the telephone in Joe Smith's office).
To provide Internet-based communications capabilities, these companies typically outfit the temporarily assigned offices with an Internet communications device, such as an IP telephone. An IP telephone utilizes a mode of communication for conducting real-time communications known as Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”). An IP telephone allows its user to communicate audibly in real-time in a manner similar to a telephone conversation, except that packets of audio are sent over the Internet rather than via the Public Switched Telephone Network (“PSTN”). The IP telephones typically work in conjunction with an Internet communications service provider, such as MICROSOFT Live Communications Server. The Internet communications service provider requires users to first log on to the service before using the provided communications services. For example, upon arriving at an assigned office, a worker can use the provided IP telephone to log on to the connected Internet communications service provider. The log on is typically performed by authenticating the worker using strong user credentials, such as a user identifier and a password. When the worker is finished using the office, for example, at the end of the day, when the worker leaves to attend an offsite meeting, etc., the worker uses the IP telephone to log off the Internet communications service provider, thus inhibiting unauthorized use of the IP telephone. This also allows other workers to use the IP telephone by logging on to the Internet communications service provider. When the worker again wants to use the IP telephone, for example, on the next day, the worker again uses the provided IP telephone to log on to the connected Internet communications service provider. If the worker is assigned the same office for an extended number of days, or multiple number of days within a relatively short period of time, it may be inconvenient and a chore to have to repeatedly input the user identification and password on the same IP telephone in order to log on to the Internet communications service provider.